Certain Dog Owners, Lushes About To Have Trouble Getting A Cab

While Kentucky’s courts (maybe) legalize same-sex marriage, Arizona
Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed Senate Bill 1062. That bill would
have amended Arizona’s 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act to
give anyone an exemption from any state law that interferes with
their free exercise of religion. Like Arizona, Kansas recently
killed a similar bill. Georgia, Tennessee and South Dakota
(especially
South Dakota!) have dosey-doed with the similar laws.
(Meanwhile, the media has been calling these “Gay Jim Crow,” laws
which has to make the already terrible daily existence of anyone
named James Crow even more unbearable.)

But has anyone in these states thought about how they’re going
to get a cab if these laws pass?

For years now, municipalities have been running into legal
tangles with Muslim taxi drivers who refuse service on religious
grounds.

In Minneapolis in 2007, airport officials
reported that about 100 passengers each month were refused taxi
service for religious reasons, with the total logged refusals
between 2002 and 2008 numbering 5,200. Most of these cases involved
Muslim drivers who, citing religious reasons, declined to pick up
passengers carrying alcohol or those accompanied by dogs, acts
that, outlined in a statement from Minnesota’s Muslim American
Society, involved “cooperating in sin according to Islam.”

And it’s not just a U.S. problem. One Toronto Sun
columnist
was scandalized after a Muslim driver refused to allow her
dachsie Kishka into his car.

In 2008, Minnesota’s Muslim taxi drivers lost
their battle in court, with the state’s court of appeals ruling
that drivers could be penalized according to the Metropolitan
Airports Commission’s rules. Those rules suspend the license of
drivers for 30 days for refusing a pick-up. A second infraction
brings a two-year revocation.

By the looks of it, Arizona’s SB1062—and its cousins—would allow
Muslim drivers the freedom to conduct their radical Islamic
transportation jihads against dogs and booze.

Can you guess how conservative reactions differed when it comes
to the merits of these two points of view on religious freedom? You
don’t have to!

Just over two months ago, Glenn Beck-founded conservative site
The Blaze
reported the story of a blind man whose assistant dog was
repeatedly refused taxi service on religious grounds. The comments
on the piece are, almost without exception, not on the side of the
drivers’ religious freedoms (with a dose of racism for good
measure).

Meanwhile, The Blaze also just
ran a story about the Arizona bill that would allow Christians
to refuse service to gays. Can you guess which side most of the
conservative commenters are on now?